Bookish, Matthew Sweet
Bookish, Matthew Sweet
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

Bookish
a witty, warm-hearted mystery perfect for book lovers

Author: Matthew Sweet

Series: Bookish

Narrator: Mark Gatiss

Unabridged: 10 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Quercus

Published: 07/17/2025

Synopsis

Adapted from the major television series created by Mark Gatiss - out now!

'A delicious read' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ READER REVIEW

London, 1946. Gabriel Book is an erudite and unconventional London bookseller married to Trottie, the owner of the wallpaper shop next door. He is also a sleuth who uses the chaotic riches of his stock to crack the puzzling cases that come his way.

He does not work alone. Book's shop is a magnet for waifs and strays - some of whom bring mysteries of their own to his door. There's Nora, sometime bookseller and true crime enthusiast; Dog, connoisseur of ginger biscuits and then Jack, whose arrival at the shop forces Book to confront a loose end from his own past.

Clever, endearing and entertaining, Bookish is a warm-hearted and unexpected mystery, about books, murder and the secrets we all keep.

About Matthew Sweet

Matthew Sweet is co-writer, with Mark Gatiss, of Bookish. He is a Fellow of the School of Advanced Study, University of London and the author of Inventing the Victorians, Shepperton Babylon, The West End Front, Operation Chaos and the crime novel The New Forest Murders. His biography, Barbara Cartland: The Great Dictator is published in September 2026. He is the presenter of Free Thinking (BBC Radio 4) and his 25 years of television and radio programmes include The Culture Show (BBC2), Checking into History (C4), 12 years of Sound of Cinema (Radio 3), five series of The Philosophers Arms (Radio 4), and 1922: The Birth of Now, a ten-part history of modernism (Radio 4). He has been film critic of the Independent on Sunday, photography critic of Newsweek and fashion columnist for 1843/The Economist. Liberation Radio - his collaboration with the artists Nhung Nguyen and Esther Johnson - has been staged at the Manzi gallery in Hanoi and at Index, the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm. In 2017 he and the baker Frances Quinn achieved a chocolate-related Guinness World record that held good until 2022, when it was broken by Ant and Dec.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Alice on August 08, 2025

really enjoyed this so much, war crime has me hooked.......more

Goodreads review by Hilary on September 22, 2025

I was attracted to this book because I’d seen the TV series advertised (not on Freeview)and knew Mark Gatiss was involved in the production as well as taking the part of Gabriel Book himself. I was therefore expecting something as complex and clever as Sherlock had been. This it was not, but it was......more

Goodreads review by Alexandra (Ally) on November 04, 2025

DNF I was really excited to pick this up based on the description, but the writing style just didn’t click for me. Even though it’s written in third person, the narrative jumps perspectives and scenes so frequently that I never found a comfortable reading rhythm. The constant switching kept pulling m......more

Goodreads review by Oundle Crime on August 31, 2025

I don't have access to Netflix so I was intrigued to find this – the book of a new Netflix crime series – on the library shelf. Turns out the book was written after the TV series, not before. Nonetheless it’s quite an entertaining read. Set in London, 1946, Gabriel Book is a bookshop owner with a si......more

Goodreads review by Dragonlady on October 04, 2025

Not seen the serialisation; not sure I want to. Maybe. The concept is great - and feels so right for a quirky amateur detective. The post war period is beautifully, visually, atmospherically brought to life. The stories feel a bit Dorothy Sayers. I like the little band of characters that thread thro......more

Quotes

A whimsical account both of postwar London and of the world of bookshops. A kind book with considerable wit. Highly readable. Clever in the best of senses The Critic

Beautifully crafted . . . Sweet evokes the world of 1946 London so well The Tablet

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